The United States set a daily record for coronavirus cases on Thursday as the number soared past 77,000, topping the previous high set in July, NBC News confirmed on Friday.
The benchmark was hit as the pandemic has accelerated at a pace not seen since the summer and as many local governments have reimposed restrictions to stop the spread of a virus that has killed more than 224,000 people in the U.S., according to the latest tally.
President Donald Trump, during his final debate with Joe Biden on Thursday, declared yet again that the pandemic “will soon be gone.”
But by midnight, 77,640 new coronavirus cases were on the books, up from the previous record of 75,723 set on July 29, the newest figures showed. And the death toll had risen by 921.
“We’ve been hearing essentially the same words from the president since February, that it was going to go away, that it’s going to disappear, whether that’s in February, March, April, May, and that’s what he’s saying now,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.
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